Medieval Mediterranean Literature

Abstract

Always historicize!—Fredric Jameson,The Political UnconsciousEurocentricity is a choice, not a viewpoint imposed by history. There are roads out of antiquity that do not lead to the Renaissance; and although none avoids eventual contact with the modern West's technological domination, the rapidly changing balance of power in our world is forcing even Western scholars to pay more attention to non-Latin perspectives on the past.—Garth Fowden,Empire to CommonwealthThe last decade or so has seen an explosion of interest in “mediterranean studies.” a half century after the original publication of Fernand Braudel'sLa Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II(1949), scholars in a number of disciplines have once again found the Mediterranean a productive category of analysis, as evidenced in a proliferation of conferences, edited volumes, journals, and study centers. This renewal of Mediterranean studies is part of an upsurge of interest in “oceanic studies,” or, alternatively, “the new thalassology” In recent years, as Kären Wigen writes,[h]istorians of science have documented the discovery of longitude and the plumbing of underwater depths; historians of ideas have mapped the conceptual geographies of beaches, oceans, and islands; historians of labor and radical politics have drawn arresting new portraits of maritime workers and pirates; historians of business have tracked maritime commerce; historians of the environment have probed marine and island ecologies; and historians of colonial regimes and anticolonial movements alike have asserted the importance of maritime arenas of interaction. (717)In the field of medieval literature, on the other hand, “Mediterranean studies” has found much less purchase. An MLA database search for the keywords “Mediterranean” and “medieval” or “Middle Ages” yields a total of thirty-two entries, over half of which treat topics in intellectual or art history. Taking that asymmetry as a point of departure, this essay explores the different ways “medieval Mediterranean literature” might be conceived; how it would relate to the study of the medieval Mediterranean in other disciplines; and what linguistic, thematic, and theoretical modifications or challenges it would offer to the field of literature as currently configured.